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News Release from: Waters | Subject: Acquity
Edited by the Laboratorytalk Editorial
Team on 27 July 2005
UPLC wins R and D honour
For the third time in two years, the Acquity ultra performance liquid chromatography (UPLC) system is cited in an award for its innovation
The R and D 100 award singles out the top 100 most technologically significant innovations known to industry, government, and academia According to Tim Studt, editor-in-chief of R and D magazine, sponsors of this award: "Judges look for significant technological improvements - not incremental - and the 'wow' factor that makes a product unusual, more interesting or clearly superior to what's currently available"
This article was originally published on Laboratorytalk on 2 Sep 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Judges are recruited from a pool of professional consultants, university faculty and industrial researchers.
They recognised the Acquity UPLC system for achieving new levels in performance and efficiency.
Art Caputo, president, Waters Division, states, "Winning this award validates Waters's leadership position as an innovator in analytical instrumentation, software, chemistry and support in terms of changing the way scientists work.
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"This single achievement took more than 72 inventors and principal developers along with a support team encompassing all areas from R and D to manufacturing".
The Acquity UPLC system significantly speeds the analysis of compounds in thousands of routine samples or detects compounds often missed in complex samples using conventional high performance liquid chromatography methods, says Waters.
It is already helping scientists fill the pipeline early with promising drug candidates and increasing R and D productivity at pharmaceutical and industrial organizations worldwide.
The Acquity UPLC system is also used to confirm toxin levels (eg perchlorate, a known thyroid inhibitor) in drinking water, contaminants and banned substances (eg Sudan dyes, veterinary drugs and pesticide residues) in the food supply as well as to confirm levels of routine compounds such as caffeine in soft drinks.
Based on novel, sub two-micron patented particle technology, Acquity takes full advantage of the separation speed and efficiency these unique column packings provide.
Adapting traditional systems to accommodate these columns at high speed was not an option.
So the Waters development team broke new ground and designed a holistic system including instrumentation, software, chemistry and support - without compromising either speed or efficiency.
This is the third honour of note given to the Acquity UPLC system, which also received the 2004 Pittcon Editors' gold award for best new product.
Acquity UPLC technology was also the major reason cited by leading industry analyst firm Frost and Sullivan when it presented Waters with its 2005 leading analytical instrumentation company of the year award.
Waters has also been the recipient of the R and D 100 Award before - most recently in 2000 for its XTerra reversed-phase HPLC columns and in 1999 for its Oasis HLB 96-well extraction plate.
R and D Magazine will profile the winners and their products in its September 2005 issue.
The award ceremony will take place on 20 October at Chicago's Navy Pier in Illinois.
Anton Jerkovich, from Novartis Pharmaceuticals, believes: "Acquity UPLC will become the option of choice for the development of fast LC methods in pharmaceutical development in the near future".
And according to Iain Beattie at AstraZeneca's physical and metabolic science facility, "(Acquity) UPLC-MS does offer significant gains over the capillary LC-MS for metabolite identification".
Finally, Kenneth Wehmeyer from Proctor and Gamble Pharmaceuticals attests: "The Acquity UPLC system was shown to provide accurate and reproducible results for rapid isocratic and gradient analysis of drug molecules in dose formulations.
The R and D 100 award competition, now in its 43rd year, is open to the world's corporate, independent and university researchers and recognises the year's 100 most technologically significant products and processes.
To qualify, winning products or processes must have been available for sale or licencing during the calendar year preceding the judging.
Winners are chosen by an independent panel of 70 experts.
The R and D 100 awards were established in 1963 to identify the 100 most technologically significant new products in the marketplace in that year.
Over the years, the R and D 100 awards have recognised winning products with such household names as Polacolor film (1963), the flashcube (1965), the automated teller machine (1973), the fax machine (1975), the liquid crystal display (1980), the printer (1986), the Kodak Photo CD (1991), the Nicoderm antismoking patch (1992), Taxol anticancer drug (1993), lab on a chip (1996), and HDTV (1998).
Waters holds worldwide leading positions in three complementary analytical technologies: liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, and thermal analysis.
These market segments account for $4.5-$5.0 billion of the overall $20+ billion analytical instrumentation market.
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